


I know not who I am

by Maegfen



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Tumblr Prompt, amnesia!fic, post AOU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 12:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4305249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maegfen/pseuds/Maegfen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your name is Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”<br/>The name means nothing to her. There are no feelings attached to them, no emotion or history or importance. They are just words…</p>
            </blockquote>





	I know not who I am

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt from darknessfactor - 'Brutasha + amnesia'

She wakes.

There is the sound of beeping, slow and persistent, right by her ear. It’s distracting but oddly comforting. Her eyes hurt as she blinks them open carefully and looks into the bright lights of the room she’s in. She closes them almost instantly.

She closes them so quickly in fact, that the other occupants of the room don’t even realise she’s awoken.

She’s exhausted, can suddenly feel herself drifting off into unconsciousness again, even though she’s only just pulled herself out of slumber’s grasp.

As her vision falls into darkness once more, she tries to concentrate on the faint voices she can hear.

_“…neurological damage… issues… just don’t know…”_

She sleeps.

 

* * *

 

She wakes. Again.

The room is darker now, as if day has faded into night. The dimness that surrounds her allows her to take in her current situation without being in too much pain.

The room is white, tiled, cold; she’s in a hospital she surmises. There is a heart monitor next to the bed she lies in and restraints around her wrists and ankles. She attempts to shake her limbs, attempts to break free but she can’t. She merely succeeds in rattling the metal of the bedframe, drawing the attention of someone who appears to be a doctor.

He’s standing at the corner of the room, but turns as he hears the movement and noise of her restraints.

“Good, you’re awake. Welcome back.”

There’s an easy smile on his face, reassuring. She wants to talk, to respond, but finds her throat dry and painful, like it’s covered in sandpaper.

“Here, take a drink. Small sips if you will; I don’t want you choking now that we’ve got you back.”

There’s the smile again, and she leans forward carefully, taking the pro-offered straw in her mouth and taking small swallows of the water. It’s luke warm but refreshing none-the-less.

The doctor doesn’t say anything for a little while, merely checks her blood pressure and heart rate while her throat gets back in working order.

After a few quiet minutes, he returns to her side, stethoscope round his neck and a sympathetic look in his eyes.

“I’m Doctor Allen. I’ve been looking after you for the last week; you’ve been unconscious for that time.” He pauses and looks down at her. “How are you feeling?”

She shrugs before she answers. The movement only causes a little bit of pain.

“Okay, I guess. Sore.”

“That’s to be expected, you were… you were in a fight.”

“A fight?” she utters, voice still weak.

“Yes. You were on an operation that, unfortunately, went wrong.”

He seems reluctant to give her further details. It’s frustrating.

“I’m a soldier?”

The man chuckles, a smile stretching across his face.

“Of sorts.”

“I see.” She doesn’t, not really, but she’s tired and her eyes feel heavy all of a sudden.

“Doctor Allen?” She asks quietly, watching as he gaze suddenly focuses on her face again.

“Yes?”

“Who am I?”

He clearly doesn’t expect the question, and she’s puzzled by the confused look on his face. He composes himself quickly though and answers her.

“Your name is Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”

The name means nothing to her. There are no feelings attached to them, no emotion or history or importance. They are just words…

She doesn’t reply, just allows herself to be pulled into unconsciousness once more.

 

* * *

 

She dreams.

She see figures, people, some strangely familiar, others elicit no recognition.

Natasha  _(because that is her name, even if it doesn’t feel like it belongs to her)_  thinks that maybe she’s reliving the fight in which she was injured. But there are aliens and monsters and she knows they aren’t real; they are merely the creation of a broken consciousness trying to heal itself.

When she wakes, Doctor Allen is still there. He is standing in the corner of the room again, speaking quietly to a man dressed in jeans and a snug fitting t-shirt, a small American flag adorning the front. He seems familiar, but she cannot place him. There is a third man in the room. A man dressed mainly in black, a young face, styled haircut. A bow rests casually on his back, and really, who brings a weapon into a hospital?  She definitely feels a pull to him despite this, but even with that tug of recognition Natasha is still unable to give him a name.

Doctor Allen had told her that she had a form of retrograde amnesia, brought on by a combination of head trauma and drugs. Natasha isn’t sure but, as she cannot feel a bandage around her head, she believes that the drugs have been the main cause of her condition.

“I know you…” Natasha starts, carefully sitting up and looking at both the men. Doctor Allen takes a step back, leans against the wall. Clearly he’s just here to observe.

The two newest arrivals in her hospital room look at each other before turning back to face her.

“Yeah, you do,” one answers, the one in black, the one who feels like family. “I’m Clint. And this is Steve.” He points to the other man standing beside him. Steve smiles at her, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Are we friends?” Natasha asks.

She watches as Clint swallows heavily, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly in his throat.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Have been for a long time.” He looks upset, but covers it well. Natasha wants to reach out and touch his arm, but finds she doesn’t have the strength. “We’re teammates too, the three of us.”

“So you were there when I was hurt?”

It’s Steve who answers next.

“We were. We tried to help you, but there was an explosion, a munitions dump was blown up nearby. We were all caught in the crossfire; you more than the rest of us. You’d already… already been drugged by that point.”

“Oh.”

She’s not entirely sure what to say, because she doesn’t remember any of this. There is nothing in her memory of the time before she woke up in this hospital bed.

“Thank you for saving me,” Natasha says eventually, watching the guilt flash over the eyes of her two visitors. She hates seeing that look on their faces, but is unsure of what to say to prevent it.

There is an uncomfortable silence between all the occupants of the room for several drawn out minutes, before Doctor Allen ushers Clint and Steve out of the room and leaves her in peace.

As Natasha falls asleep  _(again; she is so tired of being tired)_ she sees the faces of Clint and Steve in her dreams. She thinks they were there before and the thought brings her a little comfort.

 

* * *

 

She dreams. 

Sometimes there is a room. A room so dark  _(the colour of blood, blood that is everywhere)_ that she struggles to make out figures and people, objects and places. She fights in this room, trains, shoots,  _kills_.

They are the worst of dreams. Natasha hates them and wakes up screaming.

Other dreams are nicer.

Clint is there. And Steve, and Tony and Maria and Pepper. All the people who have come to visit her in the last two weeks of her stay in hospital.

_(She discovers that she is staying in Tony’s building, that they are also teammates and that, on occasion, he can be a jerk. Pepper and Maria chat with her quietly and reveal pieces of their shared past. Clint and Steve share carefully worded stories of their past battles, of their successes rather than dwelling on their failures.)_

These dreams are much more pleasant. They are quieter, more relaxed. There is no death, no feeling of panic.

Instead there are friends and camaraderie and a sense of  _belonging_.

Natasha likes these dreams.

 

* * *

 

She waits.

The weeks stretch on. She is eventually discharged from the hospital wing, but remains confined to the tower in which Tony and the others have made their home.

The days are filled with visits from those she is quickly recognising as her friends. Odd snippets of her life from  _before_  are coming back, slowly but surely.

_(Yesterday she remembered being in Budapest and Clint’s smile had lit up the room. The day before she recalled a girls night out in New York; Pepper and Maria had laughed and added more sordid details to her memories.)_

The nights though? The nights are still filled with dreams. Some are terrifying. Some are nice. Some are just confusing.

More and more, the dreams are taken up by a man. Someone who hasn’t visited before, someone who is a stranger and yet his presence lingers in her consciousness when she is alone in her room and let to her own thoughts.

Natasha knows, however, that this man cannot exist. She knows this, because in her dreams he transforms.

To look at him he is timid, quiet, calculating. But then they are in the middle of a fight  _(somehow; dreams are a curious thing…)_  and he changes. One second he is a man, and the next he is a monster. Tall, angry, green.

It is for this reason that Natasha never mentions this man to anyone else. Because honestly, who would believe that a man could change into that?

So the mystery man goes unmentioned and she continues to recover.

It is a slow process, but Doctor Allen is confident of her return to full fitness within the next few days. Her memories, on the other hand, are another matter entirely. He is confident that they will return eventually, but, rather frustratingly, there is no way of knowing how long it will take.

_(“Every patient is different; it will just take time,” Allen says quietly, as Natasha flips through a photo album Clint has brought her. The smiling faces of the Bartons look out at her, and she smiles when she can remember their names with no issue…)_

The man in her dreams continues to play a key role in both the fights and quiet times in her dreams  _(he’s never in the Red Room though, no one is ever there with her, no one ever helps her there…)_

The more Natasha sees him as she sleeps the more familiar he becomes. She finds a name on the tip of her tongue when she wakes, but as she rouses from slumber she finds that she forgets just what she wanted to say.

Natasha’s dreams eventually change. The Red Room remains, persistent and horrible, but she recalls that the nightmares were present before her accident. When she wakes screaming, she calms her breathing and returns to sleep; that room cannot hurt her any longer.

The man appears more often, in different scenarios.

Once there is a bar, a flirtatious conversation, a smile and a hint of a promise. The moment is ruined by a robot.

Another time there are hands, and softly spoken words and a transformation from the beast to the man.

Another time there are bars in front of her, a dull ache in her head and the man. There is an escape, a conversation, a  _kiss_.

And still he has no name.

 

* * *

 

She freezes.

There is someone else in the room. Natasha senses it from the moment her eyes open. Her eyes glance around the room and she’s careful not to make any sudden movements. Natasha’s aware that the tower is usually safe, but she errs on the side of caution.

There is a chair pulled to the side of her bed. It has been there since the day she was moved into this apartment by Tony and the others. It is the chair that usually seats Clint, Tony or Steve and occasionally Doctor Allen.

There is a man in the chair who is none of these men.

It is the mystery man, and he is asleep. In her room.

And suddenly the name of this man, the one that has been burning the tip of her tongue for weeks finally escapes, slips out of her mouth as if it had always been present…

“Bruce?”

He wakes.

 

* * *

 

She remembers.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think; kudos and comments make my day :)


End file.
